by Carol Mason
‘Did you ever go out with him?’
‘I did. We went to the pictures. And he kissed me in the back row. It was my first proper kiss… ‘ She flushes and tries to hide her embarrassment with a laugh. ‘He wasn’t shy, let’s put it that way. He said he knew I was enjoying it because he could feel the quickening of my heart.’ She puts a hand on her chest and draws a sharp breath, like she can feel it all over again. ‘And I thought that was normal. I thought every man would make me feel like that. The pitter-pat… I suppose that’s why I thought I could hold out; if it wasn’t him, there would be others.’
I think of how Jonathan made me feel like that. And when I went on that date with the City Planner—Roger—yes, I felt something like that with him. That was why I had to frighten him off. ‘What happened?’ I ask her.
‘There weren’t others.’
‘I gathered that but I mean what happened with him?’
‘Oh, well, he didn’t want a girl who held out. It was the swinging sixties, remember. So he went for Eva. Eva made it obvious she’d be more fun.’
‘She stole your boyfriend?’
‘I couldn’t totally blame her. He and I had really only gone out once or twice… It was a case of the easiest girl winning.’
‘Well he couldn’t have been very nice.’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think he was. But forty years later, that kiss lives on inside of me. It’ll come to me and I have to push it away, pretend it didn’t happen. I’ve had to suppress the part of me that responded to that kiss, to make myself a little more accepting of things.’ She looks at me like she’s desperate for me to understand. ‘Is it wrong, Angela, to go on wanting something that you never had, even when you’re as old as I am? To look back on your life and not be able to understand it, or have any idea why you made the choices you made? To feel you should have been swinging on the stars! Not all the time, of course. But at least some of the time. There should have been some times. There should have been some thrills.’
‘So my dad…’ wasn’t much good in the sack, is what she’s really saying.
‘It wasn’t your dad’s fault. I married him mainly because he was a good man, and, really, I was too young to know myself. The problem was me, not him. He’d have been fine for somebody else.’ She prods a finger in her chest. ‘I should have had real love and lust and passion, and had my heart broken a few times. But instead, I spent my married life thinking that somewhere out there was a man who would be my match, who I’d click with and there’d be something explosive between us… the kind of passion that I see in the films.’ She scowls. ‘I always wonder is all that exaggerated? Or has it just never happened to me?’
‘What happened to—what was his name?’ I ask her. ‘Who sounds like a right toad if ever there was one.’
‘Edward.’
‘Edward. Did he end up marrying Eva?’
‘Good heavens no! He got his legs over and then he went and married a plain, respectable girl.
‘Leg over, mam. It’s usually just the one leg that goes over, or he’d fall down.’
‘Let’s not draw diagrams, Angela.’ Her face changes from distaste to a certain dreaminess again. ‘Do you remember me telling you about the man I saw when the three of us went to Blackpool and you two were up on the Ferris wheel?’
‘Hang on… Not the one who was with his wife and kid, and you two locked eyes and he gawped at your legs?’
‘It was Edward.’
‘That Edward?’
‘With his big fat, celullitely, spotty-bottomed wife. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years…’
‘How do you know she had a spotty bottom?’
She’s still thinking about Edward. ‘I knew him in a second. He hadn’t changed. And from the way he looked at me, I imagine he thought I hadn’t either… It was written all over his face. That word regret.’
She’s still clutching her deodorant stick.
‘So, is Georgios going to be the one who makes up for all those lost years, Mam? Is he the man who you’re going to have your rapturous moment with?’ I wonder if my mother’s ever had an orgasm. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘Go on, you were going to say my last hoorah!’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘You were though!’
‘I was though.’
She beams at me and starts hula-dancing along the side of the bed again. ‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? I mean I’m only just getting used to the idea that it’s not you he fancies…’ She stops dancing. ‘Remember that day in the grocery store? I naturally thought it’s my beautiful daughter he’s besotted with.’ She sits down on the bed again. ‘I wouldn’t have minded if it had been you, you know. I’d have just been happy that you were going to have what I would have liked.’ She looks at me fondly. ‘I was pleased that one of us was.’
Thirteen
His name is Sean McConnell. And he turns up again outside my hotel.
‘Let me guess… your wife is on another day trip?’
He shrugs. ‘No. Not really. And I realise you must think this all very odd behaviour but will you walk with me again?’
So we walk and we talk and I can tell we are both avoiding the topic of his marriage. So I tell him about my mother—the conversation we seem to fall back on. ‘I just can’t picture them, you know, going at it,’ I tell him.
‘Why not? She’s still a person, just because she’s your mother.’
‘Mothers aren’t people. And they’re not supposed to want rollicking rapturous sex with men half their age.’
‘He’s half her age?’
‘Not exactly. I guess, more like a quarter.’
‘He’s a fifteen-year-old?’
I laugh.
‘Is she as pretty as you are?’ he asks.
‘Mam?’ I laugh to hide my embarrassment. ‘If I say no, I’d be doing her a disservice. If I say yes, you’re going to think I’m hung up on myself.’
‘But we both know you are.’
‘Cheeky! What’s that mean?’
‘I could tell that when I first saw you that day, on the tour. You had that look that says nobody’s good enough for you. The way you stuck your nose in the air. You made it clear you weren’t interested in us. You wouldn’t even sit on the bench and talk to us.’
‘That’s not true! And I feel bad about that—about the bench. I felt… I don’t know… conspicuous. Anyway,’ I tease him, ‘I hate it when people who don’t even know me claim they know me! They never conclude anything that’s a compliment. It’s always an opinion you wouldn’t want of yourself.’
‘I’m not claiming I know you. I’m just saying that’s my perception of you, that’s all.’
‘So, want to know what my perception of you is?’
He holds my eyes, playfully. ‘Em…. not really.’
‘Just as well then.’ I try not to smile.
He smiles now.
‘Besides, how could I call myself pretty with this nose?’ I turn my face. ‘Look at it. It’s enormous, and it’s got a great big crack down the centre.’
He leans in for a closer look, pretends to scour it with his gaze. ‘It does look a bit like a bottom. But it makes your face striking. You look a bit like that American actress…’
‘I know. Mira Sorvino. I’ve been told that… So I’m striking now am I? With my nose that looks like somebody’s arse.’
‘Come on. You know you are.’ He smiles. ‘And by the way, I don’t know Mira Sorvino from a hole in the wall, but I’ll take your word for it. I was going to say Gwyneth Paltrow. But it’s that attitude of yours, that’s really… I dunno, that really makes you somebody of more interest than the rest.’
I’m still grinning from the Gwyneth gross exaggeration. ‘The rest of what?’
‘Women.’
‘Well that’s quite the mother of all compliments. Women. We’re quite a big group.’
He laughs now.
‘Anyway, you three were all into your own conversation. Yo
u weren’t exactly very welcoming yourselves. Hostile was the word that sprung to mind at the time.’
‘Because of you. You were putting out the back-off signals… Mind you, Costas still thought he was going to score.’
He beams. He’s devastating when he smiles. He uses old-fashioned words like score. I could talk to him for hours.
‘Poor lad. You led the horse to water but you wouldn’t let him drink.’
We sit and have a beer outside of a taverna then leave when someone puts Greek music on and it becomes almost too loud to talk. ‘Why aren’t you sure about moving to Seattle?’ I venture, when we’re walking along a dry-grassy ledge that overlooks the water. It’s quiet here, except for the sound of the sea.
He puts his hands in his shorts pockets. He’s head and shoulders taller than me. Jonathan’s height. But broader than Jonathan, more naturally muscular, without being bulky or looking like he lives in a gym. ‘It’s complicated,’ he says. ‘God, when is life ever not complicated, eh?’ He says it as though he’s more entertained, than frustrated, by the fact. ‘One of the problems is because my wife is very close to her family and she thinks that Seattle’s the other end of the world and once she gets there she’ll never hardly see them again.’
‘Well she has a point. It is a hell of a distance. I had to make a major effort to get back to England every year. I mean, I wanted to go, but you want to see other parts of the world too, and sometimes going home felt like a chore.’ I briefly tell him about the age-old pull in me of being thousands of miles away from my mother.
‘But you’re obviously a very independent person,’ he tells me. ‘And you’d made a commitment to a man in another country because you loved him and you wanted to be with him. You knew exactly what you wanted. Whereas Jen… Jen isn’t the most independent person. Not really. She only likes to think she is.’ His walking slows. ‘She’s heard they all live in big houses over there and they’ve all got swimming pools, so she likes that idea. And I’ve told her we can always come home…’ He starts walking again, sighs. I fall in step with him again. ‘Although that’s easier than it sounds. I mean, once I give up my job in the UK—‘ He looks at me. ‘Then it won’t be that easy for me to just leave and come back again.’
‘Mm. Yeah. Not that I would have any experience of that feeling.’ I quickly remember what it is I’m about to go back to. A job I don’t want that I have to ditch very soon. But I’m not really thinking about that right now.
‘The other trouble is though… and this is the difficult part.’ He stops walking now, looks at his feet again. ‘I’m not sure I want her to come with me.’ He says it very quietly, and now I realise I’m about to find out what all this is about.
‘You don’t want her to come? Why?’ I scour him with my gaze. He looks at me frankly, shakes his head as though disbelieving something.
‘You know, when you imagine how your life’s going to turn out… I’d have never seen me in this moment, you know… walking in Greece with a woman I’ve just met, telling her that my wife did something that sometimes makes me never want to set eyes on her again.’
‘She did?’ I’m confused. ‘So what are you doing on holiday with her then?’ The question is out of me before I can stop it. I quickly add, ‘Sorry,’ but he just looks at me and says, ‘No, it’s a good question. The answer is, mainly because the holiday was booked, and, well, she doesn’t know I know, and I still haven’t worked out what to do… so it makes sense to say nothing until I know exactly what it is I want to say, and just go on as normal. Meanwhile I’m still getting used to the idea that our two-year marriage all boils down to very little in her eyes.’
‘Was it an affair?’
We reach the end of the bluff, and there’s a drop down to the ocean, with nowhere else to really go, except back in a circle. ‘Do you want to sit here? On the grass?’ he asks me, so we do.
‘No, it wasn’t an affair. Not exactly… Jen’s always been a really fun girl, you know. That’s one of the main things that attracted me to her. She’s good to be around. Only there’s a line, isn’t there? Between fun and inappropriate behaviour.’ He shakes his head, pensively, then looks me right in the eyes. ‘She went to a strip club, for a hen night. Tiff—Boz’s wife was there. Boz is the one with the ginger hair, who you saw the other day… And Michael is the other one from the trip…’
I nod. Boz. The talkative one.
‘She did something with one of the strippers.’
My jaw almost drops. ‘Did what?’
‘Something not very nice.’
‘She had sex with him?’
He doesn’t answer, so I’m thinking I must be right. ‘But you weren’t there,’ I say. ‘How would you know all this?’
‘I didn’t have to be. I got enough details as it was. Couldn’t have seen it more clearly than if they’d taken photos.’ He looks at me. ‘Tiff told Boz, who of course told me, even though he wasn’t supposed to. So I have to look at all of them knowing they know something I’m not supposed to… It’s very weird. I have to decide what I’m going to do, then they’ll all stop looking at me like they know something they can’t tell.’ He look away. ‘They didn’t have sex exactly. Not intercourse.’
Is he meaning what I’m thinking? So it wasn’t that bad?’ I offer, hoping he’ll elaborate.
He laughs, humourlessly. ‘No. It was bad.’
‘Can’t you just try forgetting about it?’ I say after a while. ‘They probably had loads to drink. So if she was pissed… I’m not saying it was a good thing to have happened, but I hardly think it’s bad enough to end a marriage over. If that’s what you’re thinking of doing.’
‘That’s what Tiff told Boz. That she was really wasted.’
‘She probably really regrets it,’ is about all I feel I can fairly say about a woman I don’t even know, a marriage I know nothing about.
He looks at me directly now, firmly. ‘Jen’s not the kind of girl to go around regretting too much of what she does. She seems to think that that’s just the way she is, and it’s something we should all accept about her. But I’m not the kind of guy who can go around forgetting that his wife cheated on him.’
‘But we all know hen nights and stags are dirty. Maybe what happens at them should be put down to the occasion. Maybe it’s best not to know.’
‘It might have been. But I do know, don’t I.’ He looks at me, but like he’s only half listening. We walk back almost in silence, yet it’s not an uncomfortable silence. ‘It’s okay,’ he finally says. ‘I’m bothered, but I’m not destroyed.’
I gaze up at him. He’s obviously a lot more bothered than he’s making out. I wonder if there’s more to the story than he’s letting on.
Eventually he says, ‘I don’t even know you yet I’m telling you all this stuff.’
‘That’s all right. I have one of those faces.’
He looks down at my face. ‘What? You mean people tell you all their problems?’
‘I guess. I don’t know. I was really just joking. Trying to be light.’
‘You are light. That’s what I like about you.’ Then he stops walking, and he looks at me again. ‘Or maybe light’s the wrong word. ‘ I can tell he’s just remembered I’m a widow. ‘Maybe what I mean is… easy.’
‘Better be careful there,’ I tell him, and he laughs a bit.
‘God I’m hopeless with women, aren’t I? Easy to talk to,’ he adds. ‘All that’s missing is the portable quack’s couch, eh?’
‘And my bill. Which would probably make all your other problems feel small.’
He smiles. We walk back as far as the main tourist drag. ‘God it’s awful up here eh?’ He stops and looks around at the street life. ‘They always like package tours—Tiff, Boz, Michael, Becca, Jen… Eating. Drinking. Sitting on the beach surrounded by a load of English people. Not really my thing.’
‘You’re at a crossroads,’ I tell him.
He meets me in the eyes. ‘Yeah, I suppose I am.’
; ‘So… stay married, stay in England, and forgive her. Or…. Leave her, leave England, move to Seattle.’ I don’t know why I’m saying this. It all feels like nose-diving off a springboard, when I’m not sure I’m going to make the plunge properly; maybe I’m going to belly-flop and it’ll hurt like hell.
‘Something like that, yes. Or the obvious other option—stay in England, don’t take the job and leave her.’
Forgiving her definitely doesn’t sound like an option. ‘But the other way sounds better.’
He looks at me. ‘Yeah, but it feels more cowardly. Like running away.’
Didn’t I run away from England because I felt I wanted to put distance between me and my parents? Aren’t I thinking of running away again—to try to forget Jonathan? ‘Moving away isn’t cowardly, Sean, if you’re moving to take a job. Although it’s not an easy thing to do, and you can take it from somebody who’s done it. But running away is never good, I don’t think.’
‘Thanks for the input,’ he says, tilting his head and looking at me again.
‘Has it helped?’
‘I wish it could be that simple. But it’s good you tried.’
‘So you don’t want me to send you my bill, is that what you mean? The hour hasn’t been worth it.’
‘No,’ he looks at me and smiles. ‘It’s definitely been worth it.’
We walk back to my hotel. Outside the door, he pauses, looking like he’s teetering on the edge of something he wants to say. And then he says it. ‘If I asked you to meet me again tomorrow morning, say at ten o’clock,—and I absolutely promised you that we wouldn’t spend a minute of it talking about me and my messed-up life—we’d just meet and enjoy a good-old-fashioned gyros off a street vender in the sun—would that sound vaguely tempting to you at all? You don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings if it wouldn’t. I’m not going to commit suicide or anything like that. Although if I do, I’ll make sure there’s a special, conscience-screwing note for you.’
I don’t really believe he is looking to go to bed with me. Nor am I looking for that either. ‘Go on then,’ I tell him. ‘It was the gyros that sold me.’
